Reflections on The Transparency Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From The Society of Positivity to The Society of Evidence)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

I might not share Byung-Chul Han's political views, but I certainly share many of his influences and points of reference; Nietzsche, Barthes, and Baudrillard, for example, all of whom feature in this essay on an ideal that has become central to public discourse in the 21st-century and which functions as one of the most pernicious of our contemporary mythologies. 

 

As Han notes in his preface, today the term transparency "is haunting all spheres of life" [a]. People operating in the social sector, science, business, politics, and the media, all pride themselves on their openness and insist they have nothing to hide; that they are fully accountable.    

But Han sees through this neoliberal (and porno-utopian) fantasy of the Transparenzgesellschaft and indicates the dangers of losing mystery, shadow, and privacy. According to Han - and as we will discuss below - the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other (older) social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust. 

 

Ultimately, more information does not mean more freedom, it means greater control, and as "total communication and total networking run their course, it proves harder than ever to be an outsider, to hold a different opinion" [vii]; consensus and conformity are two key terms within this new order of transparency. When everything and everyone is coordinated on Facebook then, as Jello Biafra predicted long ago, it's California über alles ... [b]

 

 

II.

 

The Society of Positivity

 

Although totalised transparency will ultimately result in terror, the society of transparency ironically manifests itself "first and foremost as a society of positivity" [1]. 

 

We used to think that the smiling face of the politician or salesman was just a mask, behind which lay the ugly reality. But now we know that the smiling face is the truth - just as we have come to understand that the phrase have a nice day is a moral imperative. For fascism not only compels speech, as Barthes pointed out [c], it demands active participatation 24/7. 

 

Whoever optimistically thinks woke liberalism will lead in all its positivity to a better world, has failed to understand the significance of the sign above the gates to Hell which reads: Built in the name of Love [d]. 

 

Similarly, as Han writes:

 

"Whoever connects transparency only with corruption and the freedom of information has failed to recognize its scope. Transparency is a systemic compulsion gripping all social processes and subjecting them to deep-reaching change. [...] This systemic compulsion makes the society of transparency a calibrated society. Herein lies its totalitarian trait: 'New word for Gleichschaltung: Transparency.'" [2]

Han is quoting the German writer Ulrich Schacht here [e]. Later, he quotes Baudrillard in order to provide the following memorable definition: "The society of positivity is dominated by the 'transparency and obscenity of information in a universe emptied of event'." [2] [f]  

 

A universe emptied of event - i.e., one in which there is no possibility of a new world erupting within the known world - is also a universe devoid of Otherness and singularity; what Han - again borrowing from Baudrillard - calls the hell of the Same. 

 

Now, clearly, sometimes the human soul needs sameness (stability, predicability, etc.), "where it can be at home without the gaze of the Other" [3] and not swept up in perpetual chaos. But this is not an argument for the elimination of all difference and becoming. 

 

Similarly, whilst a cerain amount of openness and transparency is healthy, the idea of "completely surrendering the private sphere" [3] is naive and misaken. Ultimately, "human existence is not transparent, even to itself" [3]. To put this in psychoanalytic terms, the id remains largely hidden to the ego:

 

"Therefore, a rift runs through the human psyche and prevents the ego from agreeing even with itself. This fundamental rift renders self-transparency impossible. A rift also gapes between people. For this reason interpersonal transparency proves impossible to achieve. [...] The other's very lack of transparency is what keeps the relationship alive." [3]

 

Compulsive transparency in the name of ideological positivity and a will to knowledge, lacks a sensitivity to the import of secrecy and for what Nietzsche termed the pathos of distance. The attempt to illuminate (and expose) everything and everyone under the same bright searchlight, "only makes the world more shameless and more naked" [4].  

In sum: we require a little negativity, a little shadow, even a little corruption in all spheres; negative thoughts and feelings - somewhat paradoxicaly - make happy and keep sane. An excess of positivity ends in exhaustion and depression. Click the like button if you agree ...

 

The Society of Exhibition

How do you know a sacred object when you see one? It's always hidden from view; the holy is not transparent. It's value depends upon its actual existence rather than its exhibition; the fact that it is what it is, even if it is withdrawn and separated off.

 

Within the society of positivity, however, seeing is believing; "things become commodities, they must be displayed in order to be; cult value disappears in favour of exhibition value" [9]. But this compulsion for display "that hands everything over to visibility" [9] results in objects losing their aura, defined by Walter Benjamin as a thing's unique existence within time and space [g]. 

 

This holds true for people too - and the human countenance ... 

 

If the last trace of aura can be found in a beautiful old photograph, digital technology assures "that the 'human countenance' has become a mere face that equals only its exhibition value" [10] on social media. All imperfections and blemishes and signs of aging are removed [h], even though it's these things that make us unique; the negativity of time, for example, playing a constitutive role. 

 

Transparency desires perfection, but it doesn't allow for transcendence. And digital photography is transparent photography: "without birth or death, without destiny or event" [11], says Han. However, whilst I understand the argument he's making (borrowed from Heidegger, Benjamin, and Barthes), I'm not sure I agree with it. 

 

Or rather, even if it's true, I'm not sure I care, as I like the pictures taken with my i-Phone; even if - or perhaps precisely because - they lack "semantic and temporal density" [11]. Not every image needs to be meaningful or mournful; nostalgic or romantic. 

 

And just because images are digitally reworked and circulated on social media, that doesn't necessarily mean they are obscene [i], or that the objects made visible have had their inherent nature compromised. I tend to agree with Graham Harman, objects cannot be exhausted by their relations with other objects - including a human being with a camera - meaning that they retain an excessive reality that is always unseen, unknown, withdrawn.  

 

And whilst the exhibiting and exploiting of bare life is pornography to one man, it's the laughter of genius to another [j] ...

 

 

The Society of Evidence  

This opening paragraph could have come from my Illicit Lover's Discourse (2010): 

"The society of transparency is hostile to pleasure. Within the economy of human desire, pleasure and transparency do not fit to gether. Transparency is foreign to libidinal economy. Precisely the negativity of the secret, the veil, and concealment incite desire and make pleasure more intense. That is why the seducer plays with masks, illusion, and appearances." [15]

In some ways, I still agree with this and feel sympathetic; I like Baudrillard's suggestion that after the orgy comes the masked ball. And Han is right, I think, to insist that transparency spells the end of erotic fantasy and results in the pornification of society.

 

On the other hand, however, all that talk of desire and libidinal economy, etc. makes me feel a bit weary and as if I've travelled back in time. One of the reasons I decided to read Byun-Chul Han's work was because I wanted to see what a celebrated 21st-century philosopher had to say and I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed - despite its brilliance - to basically find a reworking of all the usual suspects (authors one read twenty or thirty years ago).      

 

Still, just like the famous Icelander Magnus Magnusson, having started this examination of Han's text, I'll finish it and readers may join me in part two of this post by clicking here (or, if they wish, leap ahead straight to part three by clicking here). 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, The Transparency Society, trans. Erik Butler, (Stanford University Press, 2015), p. vii. Future page references will be given directly in the post. Note also that the chapter titles given in bold are taken from the essay itself and are not of my invention. 

      The book was originally published in Germany as Transparenzgesellschaft, (Matthes & Seitz Verlag, 2012).  

 

[b] Jello Biafra was lead vocalist with the American punk band the Dead Kennedy's. 'California Über Alles' was their debut single (released June 1979). It was re-recorded for the album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (Cherry Red / Alternative Tentacles, 1980): click here for this later (faster) version. It describes the triumph of soft fascism which, arguably, the transparency society is in the process of realising.  

 

[c] See Roland Barthes, 'Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France', (January 7, 1977), trans. Richard Howard, in A Roland Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag, (Vintage, 1993), pp. 457-78.   

 

[d] See Dante's Inferno, III, 5-6. 

      Note that Nietzsche famously describes this as a naive error on Dante's part, however, and says that it would have been more telling if he'd placed a sign above the Christian Paradise reading: 'Eternal hate created me as well'. See On the Genealogy of Morality, I. 15.

 

[e] See Ulrich Schacht, Über Schnee und Geschichte, (Matthes & Seitz, 2012), journal entry for June 23, 2011.  

[f] Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, trans. Phil Beitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski, (Semiotext[e], 2008), p. 45. 

[g] See Benjamin's crucial essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1936). It can be found in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, (Schocken Books, 2007), pp. 217-251.  

[h] Han writes: "Exhibition value above all depends on beautiful looks." [12] 

      Again, maybe that's true, but is that the worst thing in the world? The ancient Greeks also valued good looks, believing such to not only show that they were blessed by the gods, but possessed of a beautiful soul. They even had a phrase for someone who was both attractive and virtuous: kalos kagathos [καλὸς κἀγαθός]. I'm always a bit suspicious of those who seem to sneer at physical beauty, though I assume that Han is here talking about a fixed ideal of beauty based on stereotypical attributes and lacking any complexity or mystery.  

 

[i] Byung-Chul Han is borrowing the term obscene from Baudrillard, who defines it in Fatal Strategies as the "more visible than visible" [p. 30]. I don't disagree that hypervisibility, in as much as it lacks and challenges the negativity of what is hidden and kept secret, is obscene, but I don't think that obscenity ever truly prevents the object from dwelling in peace. For as I go on to say in the post, objects always find a way to elude us and retain their darkness.   

 

[j] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence in 'Pornography and Obscenity', see Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236. My italics. I'll return to Han's thoughts on porn when I discuss chapter 4 of his book. See also the post on The Agony of Eros (2017): click here. 

On the Feline Negation of Otherness

Selfie with Cat (01-01-20)

 

I. 

 

Many thinkers in various disciplines, including philosophy, like to affirm a notion of otherness - or radical alterity, as Baudrillard describes it. 

 

In other words, they wish to acknowledge the Other in all its difference and dissimilarity; as the alien non-self, which challenges the notion of a unified and universal identity and/or models of insular cultural narcissism based on such an ideal.   

 

The ethical proposition is that the Other is both prior and in some sense preferable to the self-same; a transcendent element whose loss seriously impoverishes the world. 

 

But my cat isn't having any of this; she happily attempts to negate the otherness of the world around her and make all things familiar and smell the Same. And she does this by scent marking ...       

 

 

II.

  

Encountering any new object in her environment, Cat will immediately mark it with her scent and, in doing so, she's not not simply declaring her own presence, but, as I say, nullifying otherness. In other words, by rubbing up against something she effecively rubs it out; it's a form of erasure more than self-expression.  

 

I like to think, of course, that when she jumps up on the desk and rubs her face against mine, she's being affectionate and that this is a form of social bonding, etc. But I'm also aware that she's attempting to rid me of my human stench (my odoriferous otherness), so that she can just about tolerate my presence in the room.

 

 

And Fungal Life Shall Triumph

And Fungal Life Shall Triumph

(SA/2021)

 

 

To be honest, I draw no inspiration whatsoever from COP26: both delegates and protestors leave me equally disdainful and remind me to renew my membership of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT).   

 

Phallic-shaped mushrooms growing through my neighbour's driveway, however, bring tremendous cheer and fill me with the hope that life will ultimately triumph over concrete, tarmac, and asphalt. 

 

For as Lawrence wrote, whilst brute force crushes many plants, they always rise again: "The pyramids will not last a moment, compared with the daisy."*

 

And my neighbour's attempt to create a perfectly barren space in which to park his big black shiny car, will be in vain thanks to some rapidly growing toadstools.      

  

 

* D. H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places, in Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta De Filippis, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 36.  

 

 

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2: From The Pedagogy of Seeing to Burnout Society)

Byung-Chul Han in the documentary film Müdigkeitsgesellschaft - 

Byung-Chul Han in Seoul/Berlin (dir. Isabella Gresser, 2015) 

Click here to view a trailer, or here to watch the film in full (with English subtitles)

 

 

III. 

 

I believe it was Cato the Elder who said: 

 

'Never is one more active than when doing nothing; never is one less alone than when by one's self.'

 

And I think I know what he means: namely, that the contemplative life - the concept of which was first introduced into philosophy by Aristotle and developed by the Stoics (before being given a Latin twist by Augustine) - is, in terms of Geistigkeit, the most noble form of existence.

 

Anyhoo, let's return to The Burnout Society (2015), in which Byung-Chul Han gives his interpretation of Cato's dictum. I remind readers that the titles given in bold are Han's own and that page numbers refer to the English edition of the text, translated by Erik Butler and published by the MIT Press.

  

    

IV.

 

The Pedagogy of Seeing

 

Returning to the theme of vita contemplativa, Byung-Chul Han calls on Nietzsche who knew a thing or two about the importance of developing a way of life in which one learns to ignore distractions and resist stimuli. For when one reacts immediately and surrenders to every impulse, one is not only behaving in a vulgar manner, but displaying symptoms of spiritual exhaustion.   

 

However, it's important to note that the vita contemplativa "is not a matter of passive affirmation and being open to whatever happens" [21]; instead, it "offers resistance to crowding, intrusive stimuli" [21]. 

 

In other words, the contemplative life is a sovereign manner of saying No to the world [a]; an active negation of the negative by preferring not to, as Bartleby would have it [b].

 

It's also important to note that it's "an illusion to believe that being more active means being freer" [22]. You're not free if you are obeying every impulse or external stimulus and lack what Nietzsche terms the excluding instincts, without which "action scatters into restless, hyperactive reaction and abreaction" [22]. 

 

It's important to know how to pause and delay; only the machine grinds endlessly on and on and, despite its enormous power, the computer or iPhone is not intelligent; in fact, says Han, it's just a stupid mechanical device insofar as it lacks the ability to daydream.  

 

Perhaps because we can't say No, we are also losing the capacity for rage, a powerful emotion which, according to Han, "puts the present as a whole into question" [22] and is as different from anger as fear is from angst. 

 

In brief, increasing positivization denies all negative energy (evil). And that's a concern, because, as Hegel argued, "negativity is precisely what keeps existence [Dasein] alive" [24]. Or, as Zarathustra says: Man needs what is most evil in him for what is best in him. 

 

 

The Bartleby Case

 

I used to hate Melville's Bartleby - as this post from 31 Jan 2013 demonstrates. But I've since changed my mind and now have a greater appreciation for his tale. Indeed, Bartleby's signature phrase, I prefer not to, has even become one of the unofficial slogans of Torpedo the Ark (along with curb your enthusiasm and never trust a hippie). 

 

Han offers us what he terms a pathological reading of the story (rather than a metaphysical or theological interpretation) in relation to his own theories of exhaustion and neurotic hyperactivity. He reads Bartleby's silence and immobility as "symptoms characteristic of neurasthenia" [25] and doesn't much care for the character: "his signature phrase [...] expresses neither the negative potency of not-to nor the instinct for delay and deferral that is essential for 'spirituality'" [25-26].     

 

Of course, Bartleby is still an obedience-subject belonging to disciplinary society (Melville publised the story in 1853), so although he dies in complete isolation, he doesn't develop the symptoms of depression which are the hallmark of our society:   

 

"Feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, or fear of failure do not belong to Bartleby's emotional household. Constant self-reproach and self-aggression are unknown to him. He does not face the imperative to be himself that characterizes late-modern achievement society." [26]

 

Ontotheological interpretations of the Bartleby case - like Giorgio Agamben's - are ultimately compromised by their failure to "take note of the change of mental structure [psychischer Strukturwandel] in the present day" [26] [c]. 

 

Further, in a simlar manner to Deleuze, Agamben "elevates Bartleby to a metaphysical position of the highest potency" [27], and it was this giving him angelic or even Christ-like status that used to irritate me also. 

 

Still, whilst I would prefer not to see him in a messianic light, I do think that Bartleby's tale is more than merely a story of exhaustion (it's also a tale of seduction, for example, in which the object extracts its revenge).           

 

 

The Society of Tiredness

 

In order to improve performance and maximise achievement, says Han, we are increasingly relying upon neuro-enhancing drugs and energy drinks. The ironic result: we are generating ever greater levels of fatigue: "The excessiveness of performance enhancement leads to psychic infarctions." [31] 

 

And this can't be good - certainly not if it leads to not only feeling physically exhausted, but mentally tired of everyone and everything. For tiredness of the latter kind leaves us feeling separate and isolated. 

 

If only there could be a shared tiredness; one in which we are not tired of others, but with others; one that brings us back into touch; one that lies beyond exhaustion. Han calls this a tiredness of negative potency. If only we had the chance, at least for one day a week, to just log off and rest; if only we could re-establish the Sabbath (a day of not-doing) and counter the machine-ideal of 24/7.

O for the boredom of a childhood Sunday!

Burnout Society

For Byung-Chul Han, both Kantian and Freudian models of the self are now untenable. 

 

Kant's moral subject who obeys his conscience and wishes to fulfil his duty, has, for example, been replaced by the late-modern achievement subject who has no interest in obedience to the moral law within or any sense of obligation.    

 

Psychoanalysis - a theory designed for a repressive age - is also outmoded:

 

"The Freudian unconscious is not a formation that exists outside of time. It is a product of the disciplinary society, dominated by the negativity of prohibitions and repression, that we have long since left behind." [36]. 

It may still be instructive (and important) to read Kant and Freud - and Han has clearly read a good deal of both authors - but they tell us about passed forms of self and society, not present forms. 

 

But then that could be said of pretty much every author writing before the digital age of information-technology and social media. It's not simply that their thinking is antiquated, but that they have too much character [d], which is why so many young people find them offensive and so many old works - once regarded as classics - now come with trigger warnings.

We need people with character; people who still possess an awareness of Otherness and haven't fallen into solipsism and narcissism; people who can still love and mourn and experience a range of psychic states born of negativity; people who still listen to the voice of their daimon; people who refuse to be hyperactive self-exploiting Letzter Menschen whom Han thinks of as zombies: "too alive to die, and too dead to live" [51].   

Notes

 

[a] In an early post on Torpedo the Ark - published 1 August 2014 - I discussed the importance of being able to say no: click here. 

 

[b] Han offers a critical (and clinical) reading of the Bartleby Case in the following chapter. 

[c] Not having read Agamben's take on the Bartleby case, I can't say if this is fair or not. Readers who wish to investigate this matter further can find Agamben's essay, 'Bartleby, or On Contingency', in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. and trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 243-271. 

 

[d] As Han reminds us, for Freud, character "is a phenomenon of negativity" [40] - and thus problematic within an age of woke. Today, speakers with character are accused of hate speech and being no platformed across university campuses by those who demand moral and political correctness (and positivity) at all times. "Today", writes Han, "violence issues more readily from the conformism of consensus than from the antagonism of dissent." [48] 

 

 

To read part one of this post on The Burnout Society, click here.       

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From Neuronal Power to Vita Activa)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

Many years ago, I wrote a short novel that dealt with existential themes of boredom, fatigue, world-weariness, etc. It was called Exhaustion and the first line read:  'Ours is essentially a fagged-out age, so ... Oh fuck it, who cares? I can't be bothered to write any more.' 

 

As a matter of fact, that was also the last line.    

 

Anyway, this is only coincidently relevant to Byung-Chul Han's essay The Burnout Society [a] and it's his work which I would like to discuss here ... 

II.

 

Neuronal Power

 

"Every age has its signature afflictions." [1] 

 

That's a great opening line, I think. Unfortunately, what follows now seems amusingly naive and dated: 

 

"Despite fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons." [1]

 

I suppose, writing in 2010, Han wasn't to know what 2019 would bring; although some might say that as a theorist and commentator who draws on literature, philosophy, and both the social and natural sciences, it's his job to anticipate possibilities in the foreseeable future and not just rehash ideas from the past.

 

That seems a bit harsh, however, so let's just overlook the above and concede that neurological conditions - including depression, personality disorder, and burnout syndrome - also play a significant role in life today. 

 

These are not viral infections, but infarctions, says Han, that result from "an excess of positivity" [1]. He continues: "The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts."

 

We have, if you like, been sent mad with fatigue by our own 24/7 lifestyles (lived increasingly online), in which all Otherness is exorcised. And because Otherness is disappearing, "we live in a time that is poor in negativity" [4] - even if rich in difference (the form by which the Same likes to disguise itself).    

Beyond Disciplinary Society

Like Baudrillard, Han wants us to forget Foucault - or, at any rate, agree that today's society is no longer the one that Foucault described fifty-years ago. The prisons, asylums, and workhouses, of old have been replaced by fitness studios, fast-food outlets, and shopping malls:

 

"Twenty-first century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also its inhabitants are no longer 'obedience-subjects' but 'achievement-subjects'. They are entrepreneurs of themselves." [8]    

Foucault's theory of power simply cannot account for how things are now, says Han. 

 

However, whilst I agree that the world has changed, it's simply mistaken to say that Foucault's cratology is tied to a negative (or repressive) model of power; the power to prohibit and say No. Foucault explicitly rejects this model and challenges traditional representations in which power is characterised in an exclusively restrictive manner; "poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention, and seemingly doomed always to repeat itself" [b]. 

 

Contrary to the above, Foucault offers us a gay, energy-based model of power outside of accepted values and beyond the "negative and emaciated form of prohibition" [c]. This model allows power to produce things - including forms of knowledge - as well as induce pleasures. And so, it explains very well why - as Han later notes - despite there being a paradigm shift from disciplinary society to achievement society, there has been a level of continuity and no real break exists between the modal verbs Should and Can. 

 

In other words, achievement society still has the same network of power running through it as disciplinary society. It's just that whereas the latter required our obedience to authority, the former requires us to show some initiative and be self-motivated and self-expressive - and, above all, achieve - to the point of exhaustion and depression [d].   

 

The contemporary subject is voluntarily self-exploitative; the perfect worker, determined to have a nice day and always wear that happy face (until the crack-up and break down comes due to excessive positivity and compulsive freedom).  

 

 

Profound Boredom

 

"Excessive positivity also expresses iself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered." [12]

 

Perhaps this is why Han chooses to publish his work in essay form and to favour short sentences; he's making a somewhat patronising assumption about his reader's ability to concentrate and follow complex arguments at length. 

 

Of course, he might have a point: I know that my own ability to think has flattened over recent years, even as it has broadened and, indeed, accelerated. For Han, this shows regression to animality. For wild animals, he says, are "incapable of contemplative immersion" [12]; they are always alert to what's going on around them and easily distracted [e].               

  

For Han, human regression of this nature is a bad thing. Why? Because we owe the cultural achievements of humanity "to deep, contemplative attention" [13]. Scatty individuals may by good at multitasking and playing video games (not things Han approves of), but they'll never produce great works of art or philosophy. Having a low boredom threshold, makes one incapable of "the profound idleness that benefits the creative process" [13].

Unfortunately, this simply sounds like bourgeois snobbery (even when you call upon Walter Benjamin and Nietzsche for support).

And so, whilst I can certainly see the attractions of the vita contemplativa, I'm not going to knock those for whom such a life would be intolerable, nor denigrate the cognitive abilities (and dancing skills) of animals.      

 

 

Vita Activa

 

One philosopher who wasn't prepared to simply dismiss the via activa as mere restless stupidity, was Hannah Arendt [f]. Particularly if action results in the birth of something new. 

 

Unfortunately, Arendt thinks that modern society - as a society of perfected slavery - "nullifies any possibility for action when it degrades the human being into an animal laborans, a beast of burden" [17], subsumed within the herd. 

 

Byung-Chul Han doesn't buy into this argument, however, and doesn't think Arendt has much to tell us about today's world:

"Arendt's descriptions of the modern animal laborans do not correspond to what we can observe in today's achievement society. The late-modern animal laborans does not give up its individuality or ego in order to merge, through the work it performs, with the anonymous life of the species. Rather, contemporary labour society [...] fosters individuality ... The late-modern animal laborans is equipped with an ego just short of bursting. And it is anything but passive [...] It is hyperactive and hyperneurotic." [17-18]  

 

I suppose that's why Frank Costanza's cry of Serenity now! continues to resonate so powerfully; we all desire a little peace and quiet in our lives [g]. And that perhaps requires learning how to live a little more slowly; Han argues that everything seems sped up and transient today:   

 

"The general denarrativization of the world [following the death of God] is reinforcing the feeling of fleetingness. It makes life bare." [18]

 

Indeed, it makes life so bare, that it's even barer "than the life of homo sacer" [18] [h] - which is really bare! Almost unbearable in its bareness: and yet we seek to preserve ourselves and keep going as long as possible. Han says we are like the Muselmänner, "albeit well fed and probably obese" [19]. 

 

An unpleasant remark on which to close the first part of this post, but Byung-Chul said it, not me ...

Notes

 

[a] I'm reading the English translation by Erik Butler, published by Stanford University Press in 2015, and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

      The original German work, entitled Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, was published in Berlin by Matthes & Seitz Verlag, in 2010. Readers will note that the title literally translates as 'Fatigue Society', but I suppose the term burnout - coined in 1970 by the German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger - has greater contemporary resonance. Freudenberger defined burnout as a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by overwork amongst professionals. See his book Burn Out: The High Cost of High Achievement (1980). 

 

[b] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 85.

 

[c] Ibid., p. 86.

 

[d] It should be noted that unlike French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, Han doesn't think that depression is simply the pathological expression of an individual's failure to become themselves. He also thinks that it also arises from a lack of attachment [Bindungsarmut] to others within an increasingly fragmented and atomised society: 

      "Ehrenberg lends no attention to this aspect of depression. He also overlooks the systemic violence inhabiting achievement society, which provokes psychic infarctions. It is not the imperative only to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve that causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burnt-out soul. According to Ehrenberg, depression spreads when the commandments and prohibitions of disciplinary society yield to self-responsibility and initiative. In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labour society." [10]

      To be fair, I've not read Ehrenberg's work, so can't say if Han's criticism is justified. Readers who wish to make up their own minds should see The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age, trans. Enrico Caouette et al, (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010).   

[e] I'm not sure about this. It's true, perhaps, that monkey's don't meditate, but I've watched my cat sit for hours staring at the same spot having heard a sound that suggests to her the presence of a small rodent and it seems to me that this might legitimately be described as a form of contemplative immersion. One suspects that Han is guilty of anthropocentric conceit to suggest otherwise and it's worth noting that later in this chapter he writes: "Only human beings can dance" [14], which seems palpably untrue. However, it's also worth noting that - somewhat paradoxically - in the chapter Vita Activa Han refers to the serenity [Gelassenheit] of animals [18], which, he argues, man has lost. 

[f] See The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1998). This work was first published in 1958, so the fact that parts of its sociological analysis are dated is hardly surprising. 

 

[g] I have written on this desire for serenity in an earlier post on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

[h] Homo sacer, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, refers to an accursed figure, excluded from society because of some trespass, whom any citizen may kill without incurring punishment. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben developed the term within his work, using it to stand for an absolutely expendable life (such as the life of a Jewish inmate in a Nazi concentration camp, for example). See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1998). 

 

 

To read part two of this post on The Burnout Society, click here. 

If We Could Talk to the Animals

Sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus)

  

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains 

the hottest blood of all ... [1]

 

 

As far as I recall, even Doctor Doolittle - who, famously, abandoned his human patients in favour of treating animals, with whom he could communicate in their various languages - never spoke to a sperm whale. But, apparently, an interdisciplinary group of scientists may now be close to so doing, with help from AI technology ...

 

The Cetacean Translation Initiative aims to decode the astonishing variety of clicks and whistles made by sperm whales. If successful, the project would be the first time (outside of fiction) that humans will be able to understand - and presumably employ - the language of another species (if, that is, animal utterances can legitimately be described as a language) [2].   

 

Of course, learning to decipher and communicate in whale-speech isn't going to be easy, even with the most advanced systems of artificial intelligence. But it's an intriguing project and one wonders what Moby Dick might have to tell us ... 

 

Alas, I fear it won't be anything very pleasing to human ears; for I suspect that these huge, intelligent mammals will, like elephants, have long memories and will thus recall the industrial scale slaughter of their kind by man during the last 300 years [3]. 

 

Maybe, to paraphrase Nietzsche, they'll accuse us not only of being the most absurd and unfortunate of all animals, but also the cruellest [4]. 

 

But maybe, if we're lucky, they'll also teach us something about love ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Whales weep not!', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 607-08. 

      This poem can be found online at poets.org: click here. Some readers might recall that the opening two lines were quoted by Capt. Kirk in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (dir. Leonard Nimoy, 1986), which features a pair of humpback whales. 

 

[2] Scientists and linguists are still uncertain whether or not animals can be said to truly possess language. For vocalisations can only be called a language if it can be shown that they possess fixed meanings and structures (i.e., without semantics and grammar, you just have a lot of clicks, grunts, squeaks, and squawks).   

 

[3] Although sperm whales are now a protected species and remaining populations are large enough that their conservation status is rated as vulnerable rather than endangered, the recovery from centuries of commercial whaling will be a slow process and it's doubtful the number of whales inhabiting the world's oceans will ever be what it once was. 

 

[4] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, III. 224. 

 

 

Musical bonus: 'Talk to the Animals', written by Leslie Bricusse for the film Doctor Dolittle (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1967). Performed by Rex Harrison (as Doolittle), it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and has been recorded by numerous artists, including Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, and Sammy Davis Jr. 

      Click here to listen to Bobby Darin's take on the song, from the album Bobby Darin Sings Doctor Doolittle, (Atlantic Records, 1967). 

Reflections on The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han (Part 2: From Porn to The End of Theory)

Byung-Chul Han

 

IV. 

 

Whilst philosophe du moment Byung-Chul Han gives reference to the four great Bs of 20th-century French philosophy - Bataille, Blanchot, Barthes, and Baudrillard - it's clear that The Agony of Eros (2017) is primarily written under the influence of Alain Badiou. 

 

Which means his defence of love is really just an excuse to stage a neo-Marxist assault upon techno-capitalism, developing his argument that the latter is responsible for creating a burned-out society in which an obscene (pornographic) ideal of transparency and self-disclosure is the cultural norm, compromising other values, including secrecy, silence, and shame, upon which eros (and mental health) depend.    

 

Writing in The Burnout Society (2015), Han describes a pathological landscape shaped by depression, attention defecit disorder, and exhaustion, all thanks to a 24/7 lifestyle of continuous positivity - a form of violence in his view - in which we are all expected to become entrepreneurs of the self. This leads not only to ever greater levels of self-exploitation, but to narcissism, and thus the extermination of Otherness, which, once more, is crucial for love and, indeed, society. 

 

For when subjects are concerned exclusively with themselves, then relationship with others becomes impossible - as does thought - and we end up living in l'enfer du même ruled over by the kind of painfully inferior and deeply stupid politicians presently posturing (and virtue signalling) on the global stage. 

 

Anyway, let's return to The Agony of Eros (2017). I remind readers that the titles given in bold are Han's own and that page numbers given refer to the English edition of the text, translated by Erik Butler and published by the MIT Press. 

 

 

V.

 

Porn

Han opens his fourth chapter with the kind of concise statement that readers will either love or loathe: "Porn is a matter of bare life on display." [29] 

 

It's an attempt, I suppose, to distill Baudrillard's rather complex idea of porn as the hyperreality of sex (i.e. the more sexual than sex) into a kind of pithy observation that some will find profound and others see as a piece of shallow sloganeering. Of course, it could be both ... 

Si vous aimez l'amour, vous aimerez le surréalisme, said André Breton [a]. But if you love Love, you're also going to hate porn, which, according to Han, is antagonistic to eros and spells the end of sexuality as he would have it; i.e., something authentic, something natural, something sacred. 

 

The pornographication of the world is, he says, "unfolding as the profanation of the world" [29] - and this is a very bad thing; presumably because some things, like love, should be reserved only for the gods and not made freely available for misuse and commercial exploitation by mortals. 

 

Men might be encouraged to play with love - one possible definition of erotics. But should not be allowed to debase love - one possible definition of porn, in which there is nothing playful, nothing sanctified, nothing mysterious: "In contrast, the erotic is never free of secrecy." [32]             

 

Again, all this interests, but it does seem to be going over old ground; do we really want to resurrect the tired opposition between eroticism on the one side and porn on the other? One recalls D. H. Lawrence's axiom: "What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another." [b]  

 

 

Fantasy

 

In Why Love Hurts (Polity, 2012), Eva Illouz makes the fascinating claim that, thanks to dating apps like Tinder, desire is no longer determined by the unconscious mind, so much as conscious selection. 

 

What's more, she argues, we have had our imagination heightened by all the faces and bodies we encounter online, with the result that we are more often disappointed with those we meet in the real world; the flesh never shapes up.  

 

Han doesn't quite buy this though: 

 

"Counter to what Illouz assumes, desire is not 'rationalized' today by increasing opportunities for, and criteria of, choice. Instead, unchecked freedom of choice is threatening to bring about the end of desire. [...] Today's ego [...] does not desire. To be sure, consumer culture is constantly producing new wants and needs by means of media images and narratives. But desire is something different from both wanting and needing. Illouz does not take the libido-economical particularity of desire into account." [37]

For Han, fantasy survives because it inhabits an undefined space that is outside the network of information-technology: 

 

"It is not heightened fantasy, but - if anything - higher expectations that are responsible for the mounting disappointment experienced in contemporary society." [ 38]

 

The high information density of social media is not conducive to the imagination. That's why, says Han, "pornography which maximizes visual information [...] destroys erotic fantasy" [38]. The secret of eroticism is that it forever withdraws the object of one's desire from view; it provides a glimpse, but never reveals all. Love - like horror - takes place in the shadows. Indeed, at its most extreme, love is blind and makes blind; a retreat into the "twilight space of dreams and desire" [40].        

 

Unfortunately, today, "faced with the sheer volume of hypervisible images, we can no longer shut our eyes" [40]. Compulsive (and compulsory) hypervigilance certainly makes it extremely difficult to do so and hypervisibility might be thought the "telos of the society of transparency" [40-41].  

 

The agony of eros thus involves not only a crisis of fantasy, but being forced like Alex in A Clockwork Orange to have our eyelids clamped open, so that we might see everything all of the time. 

 

The Politics of Eros

 

Oh dear, Byung-Chul Han and I are forced to part company once more; too much talk, right from the off, concerning the universal nature of love (Badiou) and beautiful souls guided by Eros (Plato) ... 

 

As for contemporary politics within a burnout society, well, according to Han, it's founded on pleasure-based desire (epithumia) and has no interest in either eros or thumos - the latter being something I have written about on Torpedo the Ark: click here and/or here, for example [c].

 

Whilst acknowledging that "a politics of love will never exist" [44], that doesn't stop Han dreaming of love stories unfolding against a background of political events and of a secret resonance existing between politics and love. For political action is "mutual desire for another way of living - a more just world aligned with eros on every register" [44]. 

 

Is it? That's news to me. I mean it could be that, but it could be something entirely different; a politics of evil, for example, which understands love to be an eternal part of life, but only a part: "And when it is treated as if it were a whole, it becomes a disease [...]" [d].      

 

That, in a nutshell, is my concern with Byung-Chul Han: that he turns a once healthy process of the human soul (love) into a diseased ideal and I suggest he read Lawrence's hugely important novels Aaron's Rod (1922) and Kangaroo (1923) to get an astonishing insight into this. Or some Nietzsche.      

 

 

The End of Theory

 

When not inspired by the inner truth and greatness of National Socialism, Heidegger was moved by the beating wings of the god of love; it was Eros who encouraged him as a thinker to venture along previously untrodden paths into the incalculable. At least that's what he told his wife. And Han believes him, because he also believes that:

 

"Without seduction by the atopic Other, which sparks erotic desire, thinking withers into mere work, which always reproduces the Same." [47] 

 

Thinking not only becomes more powerful, but also more uncanny, when it's eroticised. Without erotic inspiration it just becomes dreary and repetitive: "Likewise, love without eros and the spiritual lift it provides deteriorates into mere 'sensuality'." [48] 

 

This is why an artificial intelligence will never be able to produce a beautiful philosophical concept and why genuine thinking "transcends the positivity of given facts" [49] and data-analysis. Confronted with the "pullulating mass of information and data" [50], says Han, we need theoretical thinking more than ever. For theories, like ceremonies and rituals, "confer form on the world" [50] and keep things from breaking down into sprawling chaos.

 

In other words, information overload "massively heightens the entropy of the world; it raises the level of noise" [50]. And that's a problem, because thinking "as an expedition into quietness" [50] demands calm. We are faced with a spiritual crisis at top volume: "Rampant, massive information - an excess of positivity - makes a racket." [50] 

    

And just as we can't close our eyes, neither can we block up ears. Philosophy might be the "translation of eros into logos" [52], but when it speaks it does so in a seductive whisper, it doesn't shout or issue commands. And it still respects the importance of silence. 

 

And on that note, I'll shut up ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] No surprise that Byung-Chul Han eventually calls on André Breton for support, describing the surrealist reinvention of love as "an artistic, existential, and political gesture" which "ascribes a universal power to eros"; the power of poetic revolution and renewal. See chapter 6, 'The Politics of Eros', in The Agony of Eros. The lines quoted are on p. 46. 

 

[b] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 236. 

      Having said this, Lawrence does then go on to call for rigorous censorship of genuine pornography, which he says you can recognise "by the insult it offers, invariably, to sex, and to the human spirit" [241]. Where Lawrence and Byung-Chul Han appear to significantly differ is on the question of secrecy. Whereas the latter thinks it fundamental to eroticism, Lawrence writes:

      "The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved." [243]

      Of course, Lawrence was writing in a different time. Today, pornography is not underworld or under the counter, it's freely and openly available online and the styles, values, and norms of the sex industry have been largely determine mainstream culture (this is what is meant by pornification). Still, what he writes in this essay is something that the author of The Agony of Eros might like to consider.   

 

[c] Whilst I don't expect Han to have read either of the above posts, I'm surprised he didn't refer to Peter Sloterdijk's work on thumos in his psycho-political study Zorn und Zeit (2006). 

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 328.

      See also Outside the Gate (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) in which I discuss the politics of evil (as well as the politics of style, the politics of cruelty, and the politics of desire), with reference to the work of Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence. 

 

 

To read part one of this post - Melancholia to Bare Life - click here.       

 

 

Reflections on The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From Melancholia to Bare Life)

The MIT Press (2017)

 

 

I. 

 

Neue deutsche Denke are a bit like buses; you wait ages for one to come along, then two or three arrive on the scene. Byung-Chul Han is one such thinker; part of a generation that also includes, for example, Markus Gabriel [a] and Armen Avanessian [b]. 

 

Han is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin and is (according to his publishers) one of the most widely read theorists writing today, both inside and outside the Academy; the author of over twenty books, including (in English) The Burnout Society (2015), Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (2017), and The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering (2017).

 

But the text I wish to discuss here is an essay on love entitled The Agony of Eros (2017), in which he argues that to be dead to love is to be dead to thought itself ...

II. 

 

The Agony of Eros comes with a foreword by Alain Badiou, whom, readers will recall, published his own little book on love - Éloge de l'amour - in 2009, in which he argued (after Rimbaud) that love needs re-inventing as an opportunity - not for pleasure, so much as for a new form of self and (communist) society; for love provides one possible source of resistance to the obscenity of the market. [c]   

 

I have to say, for me, attaching this foreword is mistaken. Han doesn't need a formal blessing from Badiou, the old man of French philosophy, and doesn't need his text to be vouched for by someone who uses the phrase true love three times in the space of a single page and insists that this authentic form of experience is an affirmation of alterity and a radical refusal of the norms of globalised capitalism. 

 

I mean, come on ...! Reading this almost makes me immediately put the book down. I'm sure Badiou sincerely clings to such fantasy, but I'm hoping Han is going to offer a slightly more sophisticated take on the topic - though I already have my doubts, if, indeed, it's true that he essentially offers a strong reading of the former's own political thesis concerning the revolutionary potential of love.  

 

Anyway, let's find out ... Note that the chapter titles given in bold are Han's own.

 

 

III.

 

Melancholia

 

The crisis of love - taken as a given - is not due, argues Han, to greater freedom and unlimited possibilities, but to an "erosion of the Other [...] occurring in all spheres of life", along with its corollary, the increasing "narcissification of the Self" [d].

 

Now, that might be so, but it's hardly a new or original observation. D. H. Lawrence was saying much the same thing a hundred years ago [e]. And, without referring directly to his work, Han acknowledges his indebtedness to Jean Baudrillard by adopting the phrase l'enfer du même to describe the situation we now find ourselves in [f].        

 

We need to escape from this hell of the same and encounter the atopic Other in all their negativity, otherwise we are are heading for depression, says Han. But this escape might not be a particularly pleasant experience; for it seems that "only an apocalypse can liberate - indeed, redeem - us from the hell of the same, and lead us toward the Other." [3] 

 

To which one might ask: Is it really worth it?  

 

All this talk of healing and cleansing via a disastrous event, a terrible experience, or a sacrifice of the self, makes one wonder whether Han's been watching too many films by Lars von Trier and listening to too many operas by Richard Wagner [g].

 

Do we really want to reinvoke "the proximity of eros and death" [5] in order to liberate ourselves from narcissistic captivity? Does it really require courage to dream of the lovely Ophelia, surrounded by fallen flowers, "drifting in the water with her mouth half open - her gaze lost in the beyond, like a saint or a lover" [6], or is it not simply plunging back into the same old Romantic (and Christian moral) idealism whose formula reads: salvation via catastrophic fatality ...? 

 

Over to you on this one Síomón ... 

 

   

Being Able Not to Be Able

 

Han says we are living in a neoliberal achievement society dominated by the can-do frame of mind; one in which citizens are self-motivated and self-exploiting. Foucault thought this an improvement upon disciplinary society and in his later work adopted a sympathetic attitude towards neoliberalism and the civil liberty it allows. 

 

But Han disagrees and thinks Foucault naive in his uncritical assumptions and failure to notice "the structure of violence and coercion underwriting the neoliberal dictum of freedom" [10]. Neoliberal freedom is the freedom of auto-exploitation and the will to achieve ends with the subject wearing themselves out.     

 

Han wants people to recognise their limitations; to see that love is a relationship "situated beyond achievement, performance, and ability" and ultimately finds expression "as a kind of failure" [11] and certainly not as sexual success. Indeed, Han seems to look to a time that is after the orgy when we revalue "dignity, decency, and propriety" [13] as methods of maintaining distance and thus preserving otherness. 

 

A time that is also post social media. For by means of social media, "we seek to bring the Other as near as possible, to close any distance [...] to create proximity" [13]. But this simply results in "making the Other disappear" [13]. In other words - and in words that Heidegger might have approved of - the total abolition of remoteness "does not produce nearness so much as it abolishes it" [13] [h]. 

 

So, the best thing lovers can do is keep apart - in every sense - and realise that love is not about enjoyment or the generation of pleasant feelings; nor is it about "inconsequential emotion and arousal" [13]. It is, rather,  "something that wounds or incites passion" [14] and often ends with injury.

 

I have to admit, I rather admire this model of love with built in negativity; "nourished by what doesn't yet exist" [16]. I'm all for secrecy, silence, and seduction rather than the guarateed satisfaction of needs. Indeed, I've been writing in favour of delayed gratification and the deferral of pleasure for years: click here, for example.        

 

Bare Life

 

The negative model of love, conceived in terms of injury and transformation, is, says Han, in danger of disappearing completely thanks to love's "increasing positivization and domestication" [18]. We no longer fall in love and risk madness, but enter into a relationship of mutual consent in which we are allowed to stay the same and seek only "the confirmation of oneself in the Other" [18].

 

Love has become a mixture of hedonistic calculation and stress relief; lacking all transcendence and transgression, there is nothing fatal (or even dangerous) in it. The modern day lover prefers bourgeois good health over "sovereignty and freedom" [19]. For Han, this is not the good life as the ancient Greeks conceived of it, but threadbare existence; life of comfort and convenience; the sort of life longed for by the Letzter Mensch who invented happiness. 

 

Again, I smile at all this as it reminds me of what I was writing a decade ago - in the essays collected in Erotomania (2010), for example. But I don't believe I ever arrived at the (neo-Hegelian) conclusion that "Love is an absolute end unto itself." [22] Probably that's because I always remember Lawrence saying that whilst in love one must give, one must never give oneself away and that it was all too easy to die for love - the hard thing being to live for it. 

 

Of course, Han is talking of death in a psycho-symbolic rather than a biological sense and he is thinking of Bataille when he insists that "The negativity of death is essential to erotic experience" [25]. Which, again, might be the case, but it all seems so overblown and old hat - as Houellebecq would say: "We're a long way from Wuthering Heights ..." [i]  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Markus Gabriel is a German philosopher and writer based at the University of Bonn. He regards himself as a thinker in the post-Kantian tradition concerned with metaontology and metametaphysics. Gabriel has spoken out against government measures taken in Europe during the coronavirus pandemic, believing them to be unjustified and a step on the road towards a cyber dictatorship (or virocracy). 

      See: Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism, (Bloomsbury, 2013).

 

[b] Armen Avanessian is an Austrian philosopher, artist, and theorist who has held fellowships in the German departments of Columbia and Yale University. His work on speculative realism and accelerationism in art and philosophy has found a wide audience beyond academia. His concept of hyperstition also designates a method for the actualization in the present of ideas or fictions from the future. 

      See: Hyperstition (2015) a documentary film on time, narrative, philosophy and theory by Christopher Roth in collaboration with Armen Avanessian: click here for a trailer on Vimeo.   

 

[c] See In Praise of Love, by Alain Badiou (with Nicholas Truong), trans. Peter Bush, (Serpent's Tail, 2012). 

[d] Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Love, trans. Erik Butler, (The MIT Press, 2017), p. 3. All future page references to this work will be given directly in the main text. 

[e] See for example what Lawrence writes in his 'Review of The Social Basis of Consciousness, by Trigant Burrow', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 329-336. 

      These lines give a good idea of how Lawrence anticipates Byung-Chul Han and the French theory he relies upon:

      "Humanity, society has a picture of itself, and lives accordingly. The individual likewise has a private picture of himself, which fits into the big picture. In this picture he is a little absolute [...]

      Even sex, today, is only part of the picture. Men and women alike, when they are being sexual, are only acting up. They are living according to the picture. If there is any dynamic, it is that of self-interest. [...] It is inevitable  when you live according to the picture, that you seek only yourself in sex. Because the picture is your own image of yourself: your idea of yourself. [...] The true self, in sex, would seek a meeting, would seek to meet the other. This would be the true flow [...] what I would call the human consciousness, in contrast to the social, or image consciousness. 

      But today, all is image consciousness. Sex does not exist, there is only sexuality. And sexuality is merely a greedy, blind self-seeking. Self-seeking is the real motive of sexuality. And therefore, since the thing sought is the same, the self, the mode of seeking is not very important. Heterosexual, homosexual, narcistic, normal, or incest, it is all the same thing." [335]     

 

[f] L'enfer du même is poorly translated by Erik Butler as 'inferno of the same', which - apart from sounding like some cheesy disco - thereby misses the fact that Baudrillard was explicitly playing on Sartre's famous phrase L'enfer, c'est les autres, commonly translated into English as 'Hell is other people'. I have therefore modified Butler's translation in this post. 

      Those interested to know more, should see Baudrillard's essay 'The Hell of the Same', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso, 1993).  

[g] Han's first chapter is essentially an interpretation of von Trier's Melancholia (2011); a film inspired by a depressive episode which prominently features music from the prelude to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.  

[h] See my post of 22 September, 2021: On the Question of Distance and Proximity. 

[i] Michel Houellebecq, Whatever, trans. Paul Hammond, (Serpent's Tail, 1998). 

      With this brilliant line, from his debut novel, Houellebecq refers to the progressive effacement of human relationships and a kind of vital exhaustion which characterizes the early 21st century. And he does so twenty years before Byung-Chul Han picks up the idea and runs with it. 

 

This post continues in part two - from Porn to The End of Theory - which can be read by clicking here.